Fedora originally did this… and then has slowly broken along the way and I’m getting too tired to fix it. First it was Bluetooth back around February due to kernel issues, then it was my trackpad a few weeks ago (can’t remember what’s causing it) so I have to use USB mouse now, and now I’ve realized that there’s no audio when I record with my camera, but I’m not sure how to troubleshoot it to figure out what drivers I’m missing.

The camera could’ve been broken for a while tbh, I haven’t had to use it since early spring when I had a Zoom class. But since my Bluetooth broke back then I usually switched to Windows to do my Zooms…

The last time I had something not automatically detected was on a ~2003 obscure “gaming” laptop (or what passed for gaming back then)

First time I installed Linux was maybe two years ago, and I watched a video that basically told me it’s best to start with something simple and install things as you need them, so I got plain ol Ubuntu.
Well it turns out it’s really hard to get basic shit working when basic shit doesn’t work. I was having some crazy dual monitor problems.
I’ve tried Pop and Endeavor now and I’m much happier.

Is this some sort of Ubuntu joke I’m too Arch to understand?

It was kinda funny, when I installed fedora a few months ago, the wired ethernet port wasn’t working at first (needed an update, probably because my mobo was pretty new) but the wifi worked right away. Not sure what I would have done if neither of them worked tbh.

I have had an insane number of issues on my AMD card (not even old, an RX 6600 XT). Every new kernel version, ROCm version, there’s some new bug/crash that happens. Currently, the LTS kernel is the only stable one for me.

A list of issues I’ve had:

• Random page faults in OpenGL if I dare use more than 10% of it
• An insane separation of the audio and video driver on the GPU that causes neither to be usable, one stuck in limbo, unable to be bound to any device.
• Segmentation fault when doing anything in ROCm (I’ve had to revert to a very specific month old version)
• Page fault with VAAPI if I have both a vulkan and opengl app running
• Absolute lag insanity if I use SPECIFICALLY 92-95% of my vram, anything else is fine. I swear it’s not a vram issue.
• Glitchy artifacts frequently on the screen reminiscent of a VRAM issue (newest issue that made me revert to month old kernel versions)

I’m still gonna be using Linux, but I’ve never had issues like these in windows (where amd is famous for *bad" drivers).

I have barely had any of those issues in almost 20 years of linux use. The worst I remember dealibg with was cups back in the day. Certainly almost everything I’ve installed linux on in the last 10 years has just worked.

The only exception has been installing linux on old chrome books.

I am not a techy person. But I started using Linux in around 2007ish (might have been a little earlier). First started because of philosophical issues with open source mentality.

I bled for that philosophy, let me tell you. Nothing worked out of the box, my only friend who used Linux was an online friend, and his tech support could only help me if we happened to be online at the same time. He helped a lot, but dozens and dozens of guides later I managed to get it mostly working. Google.com/Linux used to be a thing, and it was quite helpful. After a few reversions back to Windows in the early days I got a terrible little netbook, and Wubi became a thing. It allowed you to install windows from within windows, without having to have a live CD. It worked great, but it was right back to all the same touchpad, wifi, monitor, et cetera issues. But this time I could go back to Windows and research my issue, print off the guides, and use them to troubleshoot. So much easier than asking my neighbor to use their computer, or trying to read and follow the guides from my blackberry lmao

Now? I haven’t a had a single issue like that when installing a distro in 10+ years. Shit just works now. Granted, I stick to mainstream distros, or forks of mainstream distros. Craziest thing I’ve tried recently was Bazzite, which is basically just silver blue. I liked being on Bazzite and silver blue, but I ended up going back to regular old fedora workstation, because relying solely on flatpaks is limiting, and I (remember, not a techy person) don’t understand rpm ostree lol

The only “real” computer (that is, a non-SBC one) I’ve installed Linux lately on was a work laptop. Touchpad, GPU and Wi-Fi worked straight off in Debian. Though I think it only installed Nouveau, never bothered with the real Nvidia driver. And it had some weird thermal regulation issues. Once it somehow left the filesystem in “plz boot in single user and fsck with a toothpick” state. The day before my internship ended, the thing crashed hard for some reason and took the filesystem with it. (Never use btrfs I guess?)

painfull memories. mouse worked in instaler but not once installed. always something

See, this is why I like Linux Mint. I’ve gotten lazy in my old age and just want things to function.

Sheeeeeeeeit. I remember when that wasn’t even the case with Windows. I’m old, though.

I had this experience with my l14 thinkpad and Fedora.

I was shocked that even the fingerprint reader worked… well like half the time, but I don’t like using it anyway.

impossible! jkjk

Debian 13.

Tried open suse, but on my laptop it was slow and loud and the battery would die almost instantly (had to make it hibernate rather than suspend if I wanted it to make it through the night).

Installed Debian 13 and it feels like a new laptop. Not sure what exactly made the difference between the two but I’m not complaining…